He wasn’t a fish or a whale. He was something entirely special.
He was beautiful in the most ordinary way. He wasn’t very big and nothing about him was cause for second glance, yet he was singularly wondrous.
He had the laugh that was like the clinking of wind against purple glass.
He was thin with a gray tail and dull scales. He swam slowly and as close to the weeds and algae as possible because, after all, he was thoroughly ordinary.
He had a smile that was not unlike the sun stretching across the sky across the water as it was slowly setting in the west.
He was plain, yet, I loved him so. When he thought no one was looking, fire erupted from his gills and his dull scales revealed themselves to be smooth fragments of beach glass. His gray tail was an ember and came to life to propel him against the tides all while he laughed like the clinking of wind against purple glass and I fell deeply in love with this extraordinary creature.
Everyday I dared to dip my small fingers into the water with the promise of capturing this remarkable being, to keep him in my hands and to watch his ordinary beauty forever would be my greatest delight. I reached for him the tips of my fingers grazing the fragments of glass that had been smoothed by wicked waves.
They were cool against my anxious skin and I felt a desire to keep this beautiful thing like I had never felt before.
To the surface I drug his aquatic soul and in my greedy palms I cradled the creature. He was spectacular, glistening in the setting sun like jade. I grinned with glee like a child ringing a bell. And then, I heard only silence. The creature could only offer me a weak smile as if his fear had finally found him and I was the shepherd of his inevitable end. His gills were frantic as if they were desperately grasping for life itself and I all at once I began to cry.
My empty fingers made a ripple in the water that seemed stretched for miles as he slipped from my hands back into the mysterious darkness. The stars reflected onto calm the waves like electric lights that melted into the reflection of the sky
A glimmers from beneath the water glinted like an ember as he swam far away.
An ordinarily beautiful piece of emerald beach glass washed up on the shore against my foot. I folded it in my palm and I laughed like the clinking of the wind against purple glass